The other day I was looking through the table of contents in the current Journal of Environmental Quality and found this paper: “H+/phenanthrene Symporter and Aquaglyceroporin are Implicated in Phenanthrene Uptake by Wheat Straw”. The only term I could understand in the entire title was “wheat straw”! But exercises like this are therapeutic since it reminds me that I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
It’s important to know what you don’t know. One of my responsibilities as agronomist at Miner Institute was forestry operations, and it wasn’t a small undertaking since the Institute has some 8000 acres of forest. I was hampered by knowing virtually nothing about forestry. Corn and alfalfa, OK, but pine and oak–uh-uh. So I asked Ken Adams, an environmental science professor at Plattsburgh State University, who he’d recommend that we hire as a forestry consultant. Ken recommended Herb Boyce and his company, with the comment that Herb was a good “dirt forester”. As an agronomist anything relating to dirt sounded good, so we hired him.
Only weeks after we hired Herb Boyce, the Ice Storm of 1999 hit, decimating much of the Institute’s forest. A block of forest that was marked for selective cutting had to be re-marked and almost clear-cut since there were so few trees left undamaged. Herb conducted a thorough evaluation of our forest and drew up a long-term forest management play, and we were on our way. He predicted that within 15 years our forest would be in better condition than it was before the ice storm. It’s not been quite 15 years yet but long ago we realized that he was right; it’s amazing how fast a properly managed forest can recover from even the most devastating event. That’s the difference between someone with a college degree in forestry (which Herb has) and one who has the ability not only to determine what needs to be done but to work with contractors to ensure that the plan is carried out. Guess that’s what Ken meany by a “dirt forester”.